Different types of carriers for bottles, cans and other containers are known. Both cardboard and plastic are materials commonly used. One such type of carrier is made of stretchable plastic, with apertures therein that stretch and engage the periphery of the container. A number of containers are held in an aligned row, or in a plurality of adjacent aligned rows.
For convenient carrying of a group of containers held by the carrier, various types of hand-grasps are known. For example, it is known to provide holes for finger-tip grasping of the package. It is also known to provide a handle on the carrier, either along one side of the group of containers or at the tops of the containers.
In one such known design, the carrier is formed from two webs of plastic material juxtaposed over one another. Handle portions and container engaging portions are stamped from the juxtaposed webs simultaneously. The webs are fused or welded along selected portions such as by heat sealing. The resulting handle portion is thereby a double thickness of material and the container engaging portions freely depend from the remainder of the carrier, from either side thereof. The container engaging portions are a single ply of material, and may include one or more rows of container engaging apertures. When assembled with the containers attached, the handle projects upwardly from the tops of the containers, centrally located between the aligned rows of containers.
It is known to use both the stretchiness of the plastic material and the design of the carrier itself to allow the handle to stretch and/or extend away from the containers as the package of containers is lifted. In a carrier of this type, the handle nests between the containers until the handle is grasped and the package lifted. It is known to design the handle, and the connection between the handle and the remainder of the carrier, to allow the handle to elongate and narrow as the package is lifted. Inwardly directed straps from the outer ends of the handles form “elbows” that straighten as the package is lifted, thereby generally moving away from the tops of the containers and providing separation between a hand of the person carrying the package and the tops of the containers. Stretching and/or elongating of the handle in this manner reduces the chance that the persons hand or knuckles with rap against the top of the containers, and thereby provides a more comfortable carrying arrangement.
Such carriers have achieved wide acceptance for use with six packs of twelve ounce containers, for example. More recently, marketing demands have tended toward the packaging of larger volume containers and/or more containers in a single package. While the plastic material used, and the structural designs of such previous carriers are adequately strong for carrying larger packages of containers, the natural stretchiness of the material and the elongation and narrowing of the handle as the package is lifted can provide a sensation that the carrier is about to fail structurally. Thus, it is desirable to provide a more ridged or taut feel to the carrier as a person carries the package with all containers suspended from a relatively thin and flexible handle on the carrier.
A more stiff or taut feeling can be achieved using a substantially solid web of material, with apertures provided only for the handle and the container engaging portions. However, the amount of material required for a carrier of this type would make the carrier expensive to manufacture, requiring a significant amount of plastic material, making the final cost unacceptably high. It is desirable to make the carrier both light weight and inexpensive, since a carrier is used only once and then recycled. Therefore, it is advantageous to minimize the volume of material required for the carrier, as much as possible.